


All Is Calm And All Is Bright

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-21
Updated: 2003-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:19:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1626398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for stubbleglitter</p>
    </blockquote>





	All Is Calm And All Is Bright

**Author's Note:**

> Written for stubbleglitter

 

 

The walk from Visitors' Parking to the prison entrance was long and damp, as dreary as a pallbearer procession although Frank shouldered nothing, not even an umbrella, despite the residual drizzle proceeding from that morning's pre-dawn snowfall. Slush had seeped into the backs of his leather loafers and through his thin dress socks. 

He no longer owned any hats. The precipitation dripped down his forehead and into his eyes and felt cloudy, unclean. He briefly hung his head and blinked rapidly, instead of using his hands and rubbing the moisture in deeper. It fell like tears. 

There was no carpeting inside the doors and he left faint wet footprints leading the admit station. His name, he knew, was on a list. He emptied his pockets. The metal detector offered no objection. He was wearing a tie and the uniform who led him down the gray-walled hallway called him Mister Pembleton. Frank knew he didn't look like he belonged there. He didn't look like he should know anyone who did, beyond the poor introduction that was a reading of Miranda rights. 

The visiting room featured a large unshaded window and he saw Bayliss before Bayliss saw him. Frank realized too late that that had been his last chance to change his mind, because a moment later that familiar head rose with the same kind but measured smile he had seen every morning for six years. He had no real sense of what his expectations for this meeting were, except that that smile had not been one. 

Bayliss was thinner and paler and Frank found it difficult to look directly at his face, but the beard was still there and his hair was longer, shaggy. He reminded Frank of the illustrations of improbably Caucasian Jesuses in Livvy's storybooks. 

The guard who had accompanied him opened the door and stepped inside but no further, taking an unintrusive seat in the corner. Frank had never had a problem ignoring uniforms. He crossed the room to the small table where Bayliss had rose from his seat in greeting, seeming equally lacking in words. Frank braced his hands on Bayliss' shoulder, uncertain of whether or not it was an attempt to stave off a hug. If Bayliss had managed to hang onto that smile Frank thought anything was possible. He withdrew his hands when he noticed how deeply his thumbs were pressing. 

"Merry Christmas," he said. It was what he had been ordered here to do. 

Bayliss echoed the sentiment and his voice was a calm and pleasant as his smile and Frank had a sick moment of wondering if it was drugs. He looked at Bayliss' eyes and they were clear. 

He took a small step back and smoothed a hand over his bare head. "Hang on. Buddhists, they don't -- you don't celebrate Christmas. Do you?" 

With a short dry laugh Bayliss gestured to the chair across the table and took his own seat. "Find one and ask him." 

The chairs were unyielding plastic. It seemed fitting. Frank wouldn't have argued if they had handed him a hair shirt at the front gate. "You mean you're not still--" 

Bayliss shook his head. "No, no. Never really was, I don't think. It was. Well. It was nice to have an answer for everything. But I never really. Felt it. You know?" 

Frank didn't, and he knew Bayliss knew that. Frank had never had to search for answers, not that way. He put his elbows on the table and folded his hands in front of his chin, briefly surveying the room. 

"We're segregated," Bayliss explained, and Frank was about to gesture at the surrounding empty tables and use a more elegant phrase while still clearly meaning 'no shit', when he realized that Bayliss''we' no longer included him. That it had not, in fact, for years. "Safer that way." 

The words 'for who?' rose bitter on Frank's tongue and he swallowed them down. "You see your mom?" he asked instead, because Virginia's absence was too conspicuous to go unacknowledged. 

A line appeared between Bayliss' eyebrows. "Yeah, she's, ah. She's not feeling so great. We talked on the phone." He cocked his head and relocated his smile. "How's Mary?" 

Frank nodded like the question was yes-or-no. "She sends her love." 

Mary had also sent two dozen Christmas cookies wrapped in a red and green plaid cloth and tucked tidily into a small brown basket, which was still sitting on the passenger seat of Frank's Toyota. Frank was starting to regret leaving them there, but the gesture had seemed so pitiful. 

"The kids?" added Bayliss, and Frank had already reached up towards his breast pocket. He pulled out a piece of paper, folded four times, and slid it across the table. 

Livvy had done the drawing on her last day of preschool before the Christmas break. In it there was a dark-haired man with peach Crayola skin standing next to a Christmas tree. The man was considerably taller than the tree. The words 'merry Crismis Time' were scrawled across the top of the page in huge wobbly print. 

Bayliss looked at the paper for nearly a minute. "She must be getting big, huh?" 

The corners of Frank's mouth pulled back into a grin or grimace and he leaned back slightly in the uncomfortable chair, reaching into his pants' pocket. He retrieved a small glossy Sears studio photograph of Livvy and Frank Junior in their matching red velvet Christmas outfits and handed it to Bayliss. The same picture had been tucked into each Pembleton family Christmas card. Bayliss held it as long as he had stared at the drawing, then hesitantly held it out to Frank, his hand not quite making it halfway across the table, as though he expected to be told to keep it. Frank might have done just that, but there was no one else in this place he would want looking at pictures of his children, segregated or not. 

"Mary wants to take them with us to midnight mass," said Frank, tucking away the photo. "I say they'll either sleep or scream straight through it and either way they'd be better off with her parents." 

Bayliss exhaled loudly through his nose and shrugged his shoulders slightly, an aborted attempt at a chuckle. "You know, I. I've actually been going to the Catholic service here." 

Frank blinked and leaned forward again. He ran the tip of his tongue across his upper teeth. "Let me guess. Altar boy?" 

This time the laugh made it out of Bayliss and he shook his head. "No, I'm serious. Every Sunday. Jess started me going, really, and it stuck." 

There was something to that, that name dropped so casually. Frank was surprised he could still tell. "Jess? She's what, your -- penpal? Is it a Sisters of Charity thing or something?" 

Bayliss' smile faded but his tone grew no colder. "Jess? No. Jess, uh. He's my -- neighbor." 

Frank hunched his shoulders, looked down at the table and cupped his forehead, then moved his hand down to cover his eyes. "Christ. Tim." Looking up, he leaned far across the table, lowering his voice. "You can't let yourself get caught up in -- that. How does that look to a parole board? You're up in, what, six months?" 

"Eight." Bayliss' voice went hollow. "If it looks like a reason to -- they won't need it. They're setting an example with me. Makes sense, I think. I mean. Haven't I always been one?" 

"You were," said Frank slowly, his mouth curling deliberately around the words. "You were... a fine example." 

A sharp snort from Bayliss. "No, that's not -- I was a walking don't ad. Don't get personally invested in cases, look at Bayliss. Don't mix up your beliefs and your sexuality and the job, look at Bayliss. At least," he added, with a weak attempt at a smirk, "don't do it on the internet." 

"Make damned sure your partner isn't gonna freeze on you," Frank deadpanned. "Look at Bayliss." 

Bayliss hit him with a square look. "Even if I did blame you for that, you can't outguilt me, Frank. There's a reason Catholicism is working for me. I wasn't -- I just wasn't made for peace of mind. I've always been pretty big on contrition. You know that." 

Frank pursed his lips. "If it doesn't bring you any peace you're doing it wrong." 

"No. I've gotten better since the last one you heard. Confiteor Deo omnipotenti quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere -- mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa." Bayliss raised an expectant eyebrow. 

"Through my most grievous fault," muttered Frank. "My fault," he repeated more firmly. "You think you're a wrong example? How do I go into that classroom every day and look at that sea of faces, those big dumb kid eyes, and teach them to do right, to think right? How do I give them more than what I gave you?" 

Bayliss reached for Frank's arm, and Frank pushed back from the table hard but did not rise, keeping his hands curled around the edge. 

"The sin," said Bayliss quietly, "is not your own." He cocked his head, squinting slightly. "Why did you come here, Frank?" 

Frank had heard his own words from Bayliss before but never had he so clearly remembered the previous circumstances. Another criminal who wasn't, another killing by Beau Felton's definition, one that never should have been named a murder, not when it had only prevented more death, worse death. 

"Mary asked me to," he replied. That was true in itself but it wasn't the real answer and Frank, for all his bravado about thinking like a criminal, had never been particularly adept at lying. "She thought it would be good. For you." 

"And not you? Not because you feel like you failed me? Because you don't know what to say to those kids? Or to your kids?" Bayliss' voice rose and rushed together over the last few words, the way it used to when he was on a roll in the box. 

Frank stood and turned, stepping past the other tables towards the window and back again, leaning close to Bayliss. "If -- if! -- I did feel that way. I would not put it on you, not this way. I wouldn't need to. I'm not like you." 

Slowly Tim shook his head. "No. You're not. And I'm not like you, either." He reached up with one hand and cupped the back of Frank's head. "Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus... et, dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam aeternam," he whispered. 

Frank allowed his eyes to close for a split second before he ducked away from Bayliss' grip and straightened his posture, drawing himself up to full height and tilting his chin upwards. 

"If you need me for the hearing, you have the number." Eight months was a long way away, but the previous sixty seconds would not be easily or quickly buried. 

Bayliss nodded. "I love you, Frank," he said, the way he always had -- sadly but simply. 

Frank left the room without looking back and followed the same guard down the same hallway, accompanied by the oddest sense of backwards-moving time. He walked hatless into the early afternoon snow and turned his face towards the sky, blinking through the flakes, and for a single moment he felt wholly and blessedly at peace.   
 

* * *

  


Note: Catholic school was a while ago for me but here is the Latin translation. _Confiteor Deo omnipotenti quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere -- mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_ : I confess to God almighty that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed -- through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. _Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus... et, dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam aeternam_ : May almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you your sins and lead you to life everlasting. 

 


End file.
